Denver Nuggets Bench Unit Power Rankings: No. 3

We believe the Denver Nuggets have the best bench in the NBA, so we decided to rank their five best bench players in order.

Monte Morris is one of the key reasons the Denver Nuggets were able to maintain a top-10 offensive rating in 2019. The third-year guard out of Iowa State has a reputation as one of the league’s most responsible ball handlers, and with good reason.

In 2018-19 Morris averaged 10.4 points, 2.4 rebounds and 3.6 assists per game for the No. 2 seed Denver Nuggets.

Jamal Murray took a huge step forward for the Nuggets in 2019 but they would have been thin on true playmakers without Morris’s contributions. Nor perilously thin, but it would have changed the makeup of the team nonetheless.

With no more Devin Harris or Emmanuel Mudiay, the backup point guard spot was all Morris’s and he certainly ran with the opportunity.

2018-19 Review:

Morris was the Nuggets backup point guard in the 2019 season and statistically speaking, was one of the better backup point guards in the entire league. Per NBA.com, Morris posted a +4.3 Net rating, which was good for 5th best on the Nuggets over the 2019 season. He was also second on the team in assist percentage and led the team by a wide-margin in assist-to-turnover ratio

Morris played all 82 games for the first time in his career and also got his first taste of playoff action, averaging 16 minutes per game over Denver’s 14-game postseason experience. He shot poorly during the postseason—40.9 true shooting percentage in the playoffs—but at 23-years old, there is plenty of room for Morris to grow and that doesn’t take away from what was an awesome year.

Among the season highlights for Morris, we saw him attain career-highs in points (22), rebounds (7), assists (10), 3-pointers made (4) and blocks (1) in a game.

Despite struggling throughout the postseason, Morris did have some great moments. He is a crafty pick-and-roll ball handler and excels particularly at trapping his defender on his back, giving him more time to snake through the defense.

Since Denver Nuggets head coach Mike Malone went with Morris full-time for the backup point guard spot, we got a clear look at what his game looks like with a bit more on his plate in terms of usage rate. Morris saw his usage rate increase to 17.1 percent in 2019 and he still managed to maintain a high offensive rating (124 points per 100 possessions per BRef).

Morris also posted a solid 57.7 true shooting percentage over the 2019 regular season but his poor free throw rate resulted in him becoming a player who was way too reliant on his jump shooting to be effective for long stretches in intense postseason matchups.

He only shot 2.0 free throws per 100 possessions over the regular season. That figure increased to 3.0 free throw attempts in the playoffs but Morris lost his touch from the charity stripe in the postseason, hitting 69.2 percent of his 13 free throw attempts, obviously much lower than his 80.2 percent free-throw conversion rate in the regular season.

A player who is as good as Morris is at setting up his teammates for easy looks doesn’t need to be a dominant scorer by any means, but improving in terms of aggressiveness on offense is probably the easiest path to a better Monte Morris in 2020.

2019-20 Outlook:

Monte Morris will be heading into the 2019-20 season once again firmly entrenched as the Denver Nuggets backup point guard. The difference is, with Jamal Murray signed to $170 million max contract, there may (and should) be an emphasis on keeping the Canadian guard as healthy as possible for a possible NBA Finals run in a perhaps historically deep Western Conference, this could lead to Morris starting a lot more than 6 games in the 2019-20 season.

The Nuggets fourth-best (five-man) lineup last season was Morris-Malik Beasley–Juan Hernangomez–Trey Lyles–Mason Plumlee. That unit posted a +7.5 Net rating over 112 total minutes. That lineup was successful because they posted a stellar defensive rating (90.9) and forced turnovers at a decent rate (15.1 percent opponent turnover rate).

That lineup had Morris and Beasley, two of Denver’s quicker guards flying around the perimeter, with the long-limbed Hernangomez (7-foot wingspan), Lyles (7-foot-1wingspan) and Plumlee (6-foot-10 wingspan) helping wall off the paint.

Denver was one of the best teams in the league in terms of limiting opponent’s second chance points and Morris contributed to Denver’s gang-rebounding approach, averaging just under 3.0 defensive rebounds per 36 minutes.

Morris also contributed on defense with his quick hands, snagging 73 steals on the year. Ultimately, the biggest improvement in Morris’ game should come on offense, where he can force the issue a bit more in terms of getting to the free-throw line.

In college, Morris averaged 2.6 free throw attempts per game but has been somewhat limited in that aspect in Denver due to sharing so many minutes with the non-shooting factors like Plumlee and Lyles.

Expect to see Morris (and his great ball-handling) in new-look lineups that may feature untested youngsters like Jarred Vanderbilt, and rookies Vlatko Cancar and Michael Porter Jr. With that trio of forwards—who all provide either great horizontal or vertical (in Vanderbilt’s case) floor spacing opportunities—getting some run in 2019-20, Morris could be seeing a lot more space to work within the pick-and-roll, which should, in turn, allow for a modest increase in offensive efficiency.

Key statistic: 11.4 PIE

Player Impact Estimate (PIE) is a fairly new stat created by the NBA that is meant to capture a player or team’s total impact on a game. As NBA.com states, “In its simplest terms, PIE shows what % of game events did that player or team achieve.”

Morris finished the 2018-19 regular season with an 11.4 PIE, fourth-best on the Nuggets, on par with Paul Millsap (11.4 PIE) and slightly higher than starting point guard Jamal Murray (10.8 PIE). Again, this and no stat for that matter is perfect. I still believe Murray is very obviously a better player than Morris at this stage of their careers, but PIE is useful in showing how much more vital Morris is to team success as compared to your average bench player.

When the playoff concluded, Murray was second on the Nuggets with a 12.2 postseason PIE and Morris was dead-last on the Nuggets with a 6.7 postseason PIE. Again, this metric reflected what we saw, which was Murray having some of his best moments in the playoffs while Morris struggled.

At the end of the day, Morris was legitimately one of the best backup point guards in the league and he is on a team-friendly contract in a very crucial part of the Nuggets title-contending window. He is a great player and deserving of a top-3 spot in our Denver Nuggets Bench Unit Power Rankings.